Christian Order - Read - Editorials

March 2001

THE PROBLEM WITH CLONES

THE EDITOR

" . . . . but I know the future will be different - there may not be as many priests, you may not get Holy Mass as frequently as you are used to, old familiar ways will change - there will be new structures and new ways of being the Catholic church [sic]. But you need not worry about that. We can be confident that Christ will be with us and that whatever the days ahead may hold I promise you that if I have any say in the matter they will be happy and full of fun".

Bishop Malcolm McMahon

8 December 2000

Rome's apparent determination to seal the fate of our local churches never ceases to amaze and appall. No blow seems low enough to satisfy the curia's desire to ignore, humiliate and further the distress of the faithful Catholic remnant which has fought the good fight in Britain for so many thankless years. The predictable planting of a red hat on the cranium of disgraced Archbishop Murphy-O'Connor simply marks a new low. But consider, too, the Vatican's most recent episcopal appointment (at the time of writing) to these Isles, Bishop Malcolm McMahon of Nottingham. Does not his above declaration, delivered late last year at his installation, encapsulate the Modernist mindset of the smiley-faced hirelings Rome has inflicted on the United Kingdom for three decades? There are insufficient adjectives to adequately describe such a faithless, defeatist, puerile, ignorant statement of intent to treat the implosion of Catholic faith and praxis in England and Wales as a "fun" experience. Yet for all that, it merely reflects the Archbishop of Westminster's equally perverse sentiment expressed at his own service of installation last March, when he opined: "I do not believe these are gloomy times for the Catholic Church in our country." He, in turn, was simply mimicking the same tragi-comic line of his late predecessor, who famously stated in 1996 that "the Catholic Church is in a very satisfactory state."

So, despite the best efforts of the best informed Catholics to secure the urgent elevation of clerics of known orthodox belief and practice, Rome has instead given us yet another English Establishment clone full of infuriating Modernist patter: a fifty-one-year-old cleric who has doubtless graced all the right conferences and committees in his rush up the corporate ladder; a Modernist steeped in the treacherous ethos acquired through his close and enthusiastic association with Marriage Care, the construct of arch-dissenter Jack Dominian and arguably the most heinous organisation in the British Church; an episcopal child of the 60s for whom vocations decline is an ideological fait accompli requiring studied disregard for numerous seminaries abroad which are full and thriving on theological orthodoxy. Indeed, the new Bishop's blather about "new structures" and "new ways of being the Catholic church" [sic] reminds one of the 1995 article penned by Omaha's Archbishop Eldon Curtiss, in which he bluntly stated that the priest shortage was artificial and contrived and that the so-called "vocations 'crisis' is precipitated and continued by people who want to change the Church's agenda" [see CO, March 1996].

Since Detroit, one of the largest dioceses in the U.S. with 1.4 million Catholics, will ordain only two priests this year owing to the Modernist theology of recent archbishops, while, on the other hand, Nebraska, with only 80,000 Catholics currently has 31 men studying for the priesthood due directly to the outspoken orthodoxy of its Shepherd Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz, Archbishop Curtiss can comfortably rest his case. The fact is that where Modernism prevails, as throughout Britain and Ireland, there is no interest in the priesthood. Conversely, young men are attracted in large numbers to dioceses like Nebraska - or that of Atlanta, which had only seven men studying for the priesthood 11 years ago but now, under its admirable Archbishop John T. Donaghue, has 58! This is the worldwide pattern wherever the bishop is orthodox. And if the Church in Britain is now dying on its feet, it is simply because it has been cruelly denied its fair share of such men. As both Bishop McMahon's above statement and the articles which follow indicate, the party line liberal clones routinely appointed by Rome can never address the devastating problems we face. They are the problem!